1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a slip output apparatus which is used for an office computer, a personal computer, and the like, and leads record data from an account file, a personnel file, etc. to output the data in the form of a slip.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, business machines or office machines like office computers and general-purpose computers, store and manage various types of files such as an account file, personnel file, a sales slip file and a stock file. The record structures of individual files may differ file by file, so that records which have the same record format (records which have the same constituting items) are stored and managed as a separate file.
There may be a case where an arbitrary item is specified to read records having that item from a file, the records are grouped into a slip and this slip is then output. In this case, even if data in the items are first prepared in a classification code system that facilitates classification and totalization, the classification may later become unsuitable for the actual situation then, and slips may not directly be output group by group.
Conventionally, therefore, a code conversion table for classification is typically used to convert the item data to the optimal code system for classification.
With the usage of the code conversion table, however, specialists or system engineers should prepare a classification code system (conversion table). In other words, it requires very professional and special knowledge to prepare classification code systems in accordance with various types of office works demanded. It is therefore very difficult for ordinary users or office workers to prepare such code systems, so that system engineers are normally asked to do this kind of work.
Accordingly, it is a primary object of the present invention to provide a data processing apparatus which groups records that match with a plurality of code conditions into a hierarchical structure as specified to obtain a desired slip by simply designating code conditions indicating the target items in association with a plurality of items at the time of extracting the output level and output records.
As described above, the record structures of individual files differ file by file, so that records which have the same record format (records which have the same constituting items) are stored and managed as a separate file. To specify an arbitrary item to read records having that item from a file and then output them in the form of a slip, the names of output records and the target items should previously be input in one-to-one association with one another while considering the layout like how the records should be arranged.
When there are many records, it is significantly difficult and troublesome to directly input the names of the records and the target items one after another, record by record, and the chance of making mis-entries increases accordingly.
It is therefore another object of this invention to provide a data processing apparatus which, by simple designation of the names and layout positions of output records and the code conditions of target items, will read all the records that match with the code conditions from a predetermined file and will output the records together with the record names in a form as precisely specified, to thereby obtain a desired slip.